From Exploiting Anxiety to Steering Behavior: A Reading of the Digital Platform Model, Artificial Intelligence, and the Preservation of the Mind

From Exploiting Anxiety to Steering Behavior

A Reading of the Digital Platform Model, Artificial Intelligence, and the Preservation of the Mind

The article starts from the claim that modern digital platforms are no longer neutral tools for communication or search. By virtue of their economic model, they have become integrated systems for managing attention and steering human behaviour. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, their influence now goes beyond displaying content to reading the user’s psychological state and treating anxiety and stress as an economic resource to be exploited. The author therefore calls for a calm, scholarly and Shari’ah-informed reading that neither demonises technology nor is dazzled by it, but takes its mechanisms apart, links them to their economic, psychological and ethical dimensions, and reminds the Muslim of his responsibility to preserve his mind, keep control of his awareness and manage his relationship with the digital world.

The first illusion to dispel is that these services are free. A settled economic rule holds that what is not paid for with money is paid for with something else. Large platforms do not provide their services out of charity but according to what is called the attention economy, in which the user is not the customer; the user is the product, and the advertiser is the real customer. The platform does not so much sell raw user data as sell its ability to influence the user at the psychologically and behaviourally opportune moment.

The article grounds this in concrete examples. A user who is active after midnight and lingers over negative or alarming content is read by the algorithm as exhausted and more emotionally susceptible, so it begins serving “reassuring” content, quick-fix advertisements, or clips heavy with emotional appeal. A user who opens an advertisement, closes it, and returns to it is classified as hesitant and anxious, so the advertisement is shown again with different wording or stronger emotional pressure. A sudden shift from general content to searches such as “How can I feel at peace?”, “Why do I feel distressed?” or “fear of the future” is understood not religiously or psychologically but commercially, as an opportunity for influence.

One of the most dangerous results of this model is the echo chamber. Driven to maximise engagement, algorithms confine the user to a circle of content that confirms his fears, reinforces his anxiety and feeds his confirmation bias. A person anxious about some issue is not shown a range of views but is fed what matches his anxiety, because that generates the most interaction. Anxiety is thus transformed from a psychological state into a distorting cognitive lens.

Artificial intelligence, the author argues, is not in itself an enemy of humanity, but it learns from what we do, is rewarded for whatever keeps us on the platform longer, and adjusts content to achieve the goal set for it. It has no values and cannot distinguish the beneficial from the harmful; it embodies the aims of its designers. If those aims are profit, maximising influence and managing behaviour, it will be harnessed to achieve them with the greatest possible efficiency. The danger lies not in the intelligence but in the goal that governs it.

From the Shari’ah perspective, preserving the mind is one of the great objectives (maqasid) of the Shari’ah, and it is not limited to forbidding intoxicants. It also includes protecting awareness, safeguarding the will, and preventing manipulation of perceptions and choices. The covert steering practised by platforms does not remove religious accountability, but it unsettles the balance of choice and weakens the capacity to discern. Digital awareness therefore becomes part of contemporary fiqh, not a cultural luxury.

The real challenge is the gap between awareness and practice. These platforms are designed with neurological mechanisms that trigger dopamine and erode willpower through repetition, so preaching alone is not enough. The article proposes a technical barrier (turning off unnecessary notifications, setting time limits, and using tools that restrict browsing) and a functional separation (separating research from emotional browsing, and work from digital consumption). Nor should the matter be framed as a choice between total immersion and complete withdrawal. Alternatives include privacy-respecting search engines, less reliance on multi-purpose platforms, a return to long-form reading, original sources and non-algorithmic channels of knowledge, and, most important of all, diversifying one’s sources of knowledge rather than handing one’s mind over to a single platform.

Responsibility does not rest on the individual alone. Governments, educational institutions, and religious and media bodies all have indispensable roles: enacting laws that protect privacy, obliging platforms to be transparent about their algorithms, introducing digital literacy into curricula, and supporting non-profit educational content. The issue is no longer individual but one of societal awareness. In the home, one of the most serious gaps is advising children to be careful while they watch their parents captive to screens; a parent’s digital example is more eloquent than a thousand instructions and more truthful than a thousand lectures.

The article concludes that we face neither a world of conspiracies nor an innocent, consequence-free technology, but an organised system of influence. Artificial intelligence is a tool: governed by awareness it brings benefit, left without insight it is turned against its owner. In the age of algorithms, preserving the mind becomes an act of worship, awareness an obligation, and self-control a means of salvation.